Christianity and ISIS: Toward a Better World Pt. 3

Liberals and neoconservatives do not end ISIS because they have accepted the moral code of self-sacrifice.

As demonstrated in The Iraq War, American leadership has accepted the idea that, since in modern war zones it is impossible to tell enemies apart from civilians, American soldiers must be sacrificed in order to spare the killing of civilians. What does this policy of “just war” represent, but a denial of reality? In a war zone those people who do not flee must be considered as opposition. While, certainly, we should avoid the unnecessary killing of civilians, we should not sacrifice American lives in order to do so. Civilian deaths are the moral responsibility of the aggressor nation. Our own self-interest demands that we act decisively to put an end to the threat which the people of the aggressor nation themselves failed to nullify.

The point of a war is to end the enemy’s will to fight.

For the duration of a war, it is immoral to sacrifice the lives of Americans in order to save the lives of foreign conspirators and potential collaborators. The United States went to Iraq with the idea that our war would only be justified if it was fought for the sake of the Iraqis. Hence “Operation: Iraqi Freedom.”

That is not the right reason a country should send its own citizens to die. If a man would not be willing to die or to send his own son to die for a given cause, then he should not be sending anyone else to die for it. Such is the foundation for a theory of truly “just war.”

But we reject justice. America thinks it has no place for such “self-interest” in its moral code. Significantly, America’s Christian leaders have not spoken out in favor of a war against the enablers of ISIS. Why? Is it not the place of God’s people, the church, to know the times and what should be done?